For aging Boomers, last rights may not seem so wrong

Over the weekend, the wife and I sat around the dinner table with fun-loving desert friends and, over the dregs of a bottle, talked about drugs.

Not the mind-blowing but the final-exit kind, the lethal hedges against a warehouse existence long on tubes and absent of hope.

One woman said her son-in-law, a doctor, had promised to give her the good stuff. She said she’d share (but that might have been the wine talking).

The banter was looping in my brain Monday as I met with Faye Girsh, a Harvard-educated psychologist who for nearly 30 years has devoted her formidable talents to the right-to-die crusade.

An ACLU board member in the early ‘80s, Girsh was called to evaluate a quadriplegic woman who wanted to die by refusing to eat or drink. The case became an ACLU cause celebre that went to the U.S. Supreme Court. During a 1986 right-to-die forum Girsh organized in San Diego, Hemlock Society founder Derek Humphry’s speech turned on a bright light.

Girsh quickly founded San Diego’s chapter of the Hemlock Society and for six years served as president for the national society (now named Compassion & Choices, an antiseptic title she scoffs at).

An 80-year-old grandmother who survived two husbands, Girsh is the current president of San Diego’s independent Hemlock Society and (among other advocacy roles) a senior adviser of the Final Exit Network, a controversial organization that advises grievously ill people on “the art of self-deliverance,” in Humphry’s phrase.

So-called “exit guides” inform, but do not physically help, a sick person wishing to die. In many cases, the guides remove helium bottles, tubing and “hoods,” or plastic bags, after the event. (Many people want to spare loved ones the stigma of suicide, Girsh explained.)

All told, Girsh estimates, some 350 Americans have adopted the final-exit strategy since the inception of the network, itself an offshoot of a program Girsh initiated when she was the Hemlock Society’s national president.

Except in Oregon, Washington and Vermont, states where legislatures passed assisted-death regulations, the law of the land is slowly evolving. In Montana and New Mexico, recent court decisions offer hope that doctors will not be prosecuted if they hasten death. But exit guides run a risk of prosecution. To many in law enforcement, there’s a blurry fine line between advising and assisting.

“Sure, we all worry,” Girsh said of her network’s elderly volunteers. “We don’t know if we’re being set up.”

How social trends have changed in the last 20 years.

In the early ‘90s, death-with-dignity, as a political movement, was hot, far ahead of homosexuality and marijuana.

In 1992, for example, early polling showed California’s Prop. 161, a right-to-die initiative, passing. However, a well-funded push by religious groups tipped opinion.

About the same time, Humphry published “No Exit,” a runaway best-seller that, among other end-of-life counseling, instructed people how to self-deliver. Bursting on the scene at the same time was Jack Kevorkian, the notorious Dr. Death.

“My hero,” Girsh said with a nostalgic smile.

In the virtual blink of an eye, however, same-sex marriage has been legalized in 17 states. Twenty have approved medical marijuana and two states — Colorado and Washington — have cleared weed for all adults.

Meanwhile, assisted-dying initiatives recently came up short in Maine and Massachusetts. I asked Girsh why homosexual rights have gained so much traction.

“We’re not anywhere as good as the gays,” she joked. “We’re old, weak.”

Old bodies, maybe; weak argument, no.

If you ask Americans if lives of terminal patients should be ended painlessly upon request, nearly three-quarters approve.

If you include the word “suicide” in the question, however, it’s about 50-50.

If that hitch in logic is ever resolved, graying Boomers won’t sit around talking about stockpiling silver bullets in the medicine cabinet.

Get the word suicide out of the equation and traditional prohibitions could soften around the margins.

Girsh recalled a woman, a cancer patient, whom she helped as an exit guide.

Though a devout person, the hospice patient decided God would forgive her letting go of pointless pain.